Does Microsoft Access use the PK fields for anything?
- by chrismay
Ok this is going to sound strange, but I have inherited an app that is an Access front end with a SQL Server backend. I am in the process of writing a new front end for it, but... we need to continue using the access front end for a while even after we deploy my new front end for reasons I won't go into. So both the existing Access app and my new app will need to be able to access and work with the data.
The problem is the database design is a nightmare. For example some simple parent-child table relationships have like 4 and 5 part composite primary keys.
I would REALLY like to remove these PKs and replace them with unique constraints or whatever, and add a new column to each of these tables called ID that is just an identity.
If I change the PK and FKs on these tables to more managable fields, will the Access app have problems? What I mean is, does access use the meta data from the tables (PK and FK info) in such a way that it would break the app to change these?
